Sherlock and Molly - Voices in a Blue Room
by Tessaray
Summary: Molly has helped Sherlock through a suicide, a crisis and now an illness...and he realizes an important truth. Set about six months after Reichenbach Falls. Angst, explicit sex. Sherlolly.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

The cool tile of the tunnel wall feels soothing on Sherlock's forehead. This is exertion—this heat, this ache engulfing him—from walking too long beneath the city. Nothing more. The fever from the meningitis had long since broken…twelve hours, maybe thirteen…though time has been feeling amorphous. The room they'd kept him in, the hotel room, had a digital clock with red numbers that seared his brain, so they had taken it away. The room before that—the blue bedroom—had no clock at all.

Drifting, struggling to pin down his thoughts…which Tube station is this…yes, Russell Square. He should be at Molly's well before dawn. He tunes into her voice again, light, sweet…background now, like a soundtrack to his journey through the tunnels. He prefers it this way, although it's never objectionable, even when it's twining like ivy around his own inner voice, creating a kind of duet. Silly words, words she'd read to him when he was ill, floating between worlds in his delirium. It was irritating at first, that her voice remained long after she'd gone…persistent, like a mosquito or tinnitus, but now…

"_NO!_" He shouts, slapping his hand against the tiled wall, his own bass reverberating, rumbling down the track. _Focus_. His mind has become a stranger to him, following knotty trails to illogical conclusions, or wandering away altogether, amorphous time passing, passing...as he recalls the feel of her fingers on his skin…until he realizes and hauls himself back with a curse, dismisses an echo of tenderness with disgust.

Contaminated food. Bacterial meningitis.

Isabel had found him sniffing pipes in a disused access tunnel beneath Finsbury Park Station…Isabel? The one with short grey hair and a nose ring. He had almost strangled her in his paranoia. How absurd to ignore the obvious symptoms in favor of untangling Moriarty's web. In favor of coming back to life.

_Possible brain damage if left untreated._

Sets of large hands, no-nonsense hands, had removed him, at Isabel's direction, into blistering cold, then he was indoors—_and he's back there again, the dim tunnel fading away_—with Molly's voice surrounding him, soothing him. He is distantly intrigued by her presence, but can't remember why it should seem strange. He sees that he is in a child's bedroom, a boy's, and the world is suddenly vivid: Robin's-egg blue walls, models of pirate ships lining the shelves, a toy microscope, a poster of the table of elements, the smell of old books. His feet hang over the edge of the too-small bed, except when he needs to curl in on himself to vomit. Cool fingers probe his overheated skin and a light, stern voice issues orders. He hears mumbles of hesitation, then a one-word shout that jolts him closer to consciousness:

"_NOW!_"

Blonde hair, tousled from interrupted sleep, and Molly's face swims into focus. Her brows are furrowed, her bottom lip is swollen and bloody. His eyes must fix on the spot because she touches it and says, "You had a convulsion."

"No hospital," he tells her, but had meant to say something else.

She reads to him—for hours or for days, he doesn't know. Children's stories. The Hundred Acre Wood, the battle for Toad Hall...her voice is warm, soothing, threading through his tangled fever dreams with familiar words about a rabbit who wants to be real, words that look like emerald sparkles he feels compelled to chase and catch but can't, because he is missing his hind legs. He wants so much to tell her about the sparkles and his frustration that he can't reach them. He's certain she'll understand—but the words never reach his lips.

A pinch in his forearm and he is shivering in a cold bath, naked but for a sodden towel over his pelvis. An IV drip hangs from the shower rod above him. The room is dim but he can see Molly crouching by the tub, speaking to him in medical jargon that he knows he should understand. She watches him for a response that never comes. Her clothes are wet and when she rises, she gasps and lays a protective hand on her ribcage just below her right breast. Suddenly the bare lightbulb on the ceiling flares, engulfing him in yellow flames, and he hears her shout, '_Turn it off, you idiot!_' before he sinks into blackness.

At some point they must move him, Isabel and the sets of no-nonsense hands, because when he awakes again, still dangerously ill but more lucid, he is in an adult-sized bed in a hotel room with raga music whining through the walls.

Molly is gone and she doesn't come back.

###

Sherlock moves on through the tunnel, hears distant screeches, the skittering of small claws. What station…Holborn?

_He should know this!_

Bacterial meningitis. _Possible brain damage if left untreated._

Nausea and cold panic roil his gut. NOT NOW, not with so much still to do. He'd left the room, escaped on the pretense of needing a shower…slipped out the window as soon as he'd washed the sickness from his mouth, skin, hair…dressed and wrote the word _IDIOTS_ into the fading mist on the mirror. They wouldn't see it, but it made him smile.

Maybe he'd left too soon.

Is his mind going or are confusion, distractedness just the last gasps of the illness? John would know. He may be, like the rest of them, a vacuous imbecile about most things, but he's an expert on Sherlock.

Can't go to John.

That leaves Molly.

He tunes into her voice again, sing-songing just below his mental stream, notices the stubborn ache again. When he tries to follow it back to its source he suddenly remembers why he was so surprised by her presence at his bedside.

She loathes him.

###

Resting now, cold concrete beneath his bum. Definitely Holborn Station. He'd nipped above to steal a bottle of water and two bags of crisps, won't touch anything that's not packaged up, now…calculated that a nicked kebab was what did him in. The January air was bracing, slapped him, woke him up a bit before he returned below.

But Molly, soft in his mind still, going on about the Velveteen Rabbit.

This…_thing_…had first hit him when he'd asked for her help with Moriarty…the eyes that looked up at him; fierce, trusting and devoted. He realized then that she meant more to him than was…convenient. Yet, he told her everything. They schemed together—details, contingencies, ramifications—and when she hesitantly touched his sleeve, he didn't pull away.

"You'll want to go to John," she said, like she was confessing a secret, and he shook off a vague feeling of disappointment.

"It's like...his pain will call out to you, and you'll be desperate to ease it, but you can't."

He wondered briefly how she knew about such things. And he's sure he looked at her like she was mad. That would never happen…he was certain. But she took his hand and fixed him to the spot with clear, fervent eyes.

"Ring me when it happens, and I'll come."

And sure enough, one critical night she came to him in a dismal room in Southwark and kept vigil as he engaged in a battle as fierce as any he'd fought with his other addictions. She listened as he ranted, kept a respectful distance as he wept, all the while repeating, "You can't tell John, his life depends on it." Said it again and again and again until he found a way to accept that simple truth he'd known all along.

But then he turned on her, viciously. She'd seen him raw, exposed, and that was intolerable. Like her, he knew how to wield a scalpel of sorts, knew just where and how deeply to cut. Never once did he raise his voice or alter his tone; he simply told her all about herself that night, watched as she turned ashen and slowly curled into a ball. He stopped when she begged him to, pausing on his way out the door only long enough to hear her run to the toilet and vomit.

He had smiled.

###

He stuffs the empty and full bags of crisps into the plastic take-away bag he's been carrying, lets out a sigh that floats away into the tunnel's dimness, hugs himself deeper into his coat. He thinks of the blue bedroom, the too-short bed, the innocence of the place and of the boy who must live there, turns up the volume on Molly's voice, as crystalline as his own thoughts had once been.

'_Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit._ _'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.'_

Molly. So awkward. Fragile. He recognizes her, more than she'll ever know. He can imagine her as a child, huddled in a pink bedroom decorated with cats and daisies, mortified by herself, by the dawning, hideous awareness that she's so very different; struggling but failing to hide her secrets and finally choosing to hide herself instead.

Molly in her morgue.

Sherlock in his arrogance.

And the thing no one understands about him, even today, is that it's only possible to land his savage remarks because he knows precisely how much they hurt.

_'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'_

He remembers Molly's bloody lip, the way she'd shielded her ribs.

He remembers how triumphant he'd felt watching the light fade from her eyes.

"Bollocks," he mutters, and pushes on.

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

It's after four in the morning, and Sherlock's heart pounds as he stands outside Molly's flat. Her voice is loud in his head again—though still soothing, still sweet—and makes him ache for something he can't name.

He jimmies the lock, let's himself in. Her flat smells of tea roses and kitty litter. The hallway lamp is on and he can see beyond it to the kitchen, and to the small table where Molly sits in a pink robe, watching him.

He freezes in his tracks.

"Tea?" She asks.

"Thank you, no." He steps in and closes the door, turns to her, poised, ramrod straight, as though he has every right to be here.

"You're not through with your antibiotics. Do you mean to kill yourself…again?"

"Isabel?"

"Texted. She left a voicemail, but _someone_ seems to have hacked my phone and deleted my messages."

He fingers the burner phone in his pocket.

"Imagine that," he says. "Also, a very dull woman named Christine rang. She'll be round Saturday noon to collect you."

Molly just leans back in her chair, not bothering to look annoyed.

"And _how_ did you know I was coming here?" He inadvertently hits the word 'how' the way John does, and it hurts.

"You're the brilliant detective. You figure it out."

"Ah, but I'm a fraud, remember?"

"I know exactly what you are," she says evenly. "And you're not welcome here."

Sherlock has never seen Molly's hostility before, let alone been its focus, and it leaves him feeling disoriented. A cat appears and begins figure-eighting around his ankles. Molly's hair is long and loose around her shoulders, her slender fingers slowly tap a mug of what smells like chamomile tea. She is in her element and not remotely thrown by his sudden presence in her flat. She clicks her tongue and the cat gives Sherlock's shin a final rub, stretches elegantly and saunters off.

She watches him a moment longer. "Still." She pushes up from the table. "Isabel said you took the IV gear—"

He cuts Molly off by shaking the plastic take-away bag.

"Follow me." She disappears from his sight.

###

It's the same set up as before, but he gets to keep his clothes on this time. He's perched on the edge of a claw-foot tub, the IV bag hangs from the curved shower rod above him. Molly inserts the needle so smoothly he barely feels it, tapes it down, starts the drip and disappears. He notes the decor; she's certainly partial to florals. He searches for something that might surprise him—a copy of Mein Kampf on the toilet tank, perhaps—but no such luck. She returns with a large glass of water.

"You have to push fluids," she says, handing him the glass. As he reaches for it, he has an impulse to touch her fingers, but she flexes them away.

"Get _bored_, did you?" She says, watching him drain the contents, a fist on her hip. Her voice is tight, clipped, not at all like the voice in his head.

"They were bor-_ing_," he says with a jut of his chin.

"Isabel and Liam saved your life."

"_You_ saved my life. Twice now," he says. "In spite of your current state of…pique."

She narrows her eyes at him, starts to speak but he cuts her off.

"Besides, you wouldn't want all our hard work to be in vain." He rummages in his metaphorical bag of tricks and pulls out a smile that has reliably melted her a hundred times in the past.

She rolls her eyes. "Right. We're done with that." She leans down, places her face level with his and lays a warm hand on his shoulder. He sees himself reflected in her pupils. "I know what you think of me, Sherlock. You told me straight out. And I won't be manipulated by you again."

Part of him leaps with joy at the challenge this statement poses, another part notes that her robe has fallen open enough to reveal her cleavage, but the greater part hears the resolve in her voice, and the hurt behind it.

"Molly—"

She straightens up. "I looked in your bag. You have everything you need and you know what to do. Finish this course of antibiotics, yeah? Don't be an idiot. We both know how you detest idiots. And here," she says, tossing him the extra bag of crisps. "Have a snack."

"Those are for you," he drawls. "For your trouble."

"Sherlock, the days of you bribing—," she stops herself, swallows hard and drops her head. When she raises it again, her eyes are wet. "There's only one thing I ever wanted for my _trouble_."

She turns to leave, her soft hair swinging around her shoulders.

"Where are you going?"

"Bed. Let yourself out when you're done. And I'll be installing a deadbolt tomorrow."

"So, you...hate me, then." He knew it, but feels a bewildering, bitter sense of loss just the same.

She's halfway out the door, stops, doesn't turn around. "Wasn't that the idea?"

"It was," he admits.

"Nicely played, then," she says quietly.

As she takes a step to leave, he notices that she's wearing little white socks...somehow he finds that unbearably touching.

"Molly Hooper," he says. "Please don't go."

_To be continued_


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

Sherlock is careful what he tells Molly about his condition, sticks to his symptoms—headaches, fatigue, loss of mental focus and clarity—avoids articulating any fear or sentiment. He watches her face as she synthesizes the information, asks for details he hadn't thought to include, forms hypotheses then discards them just as quickly. Her manner is intense, incisive and it occurs to him he could be watching a slower-motion version of himself.

He doesn't mention her voice in his head.

But when she kneels down and takes his wrist between gentle fingers, he's lost; the sensation is so familiar, so comforting that he almost sighs aloud. He'd thought the ache would subside when he heard her voice, when she touched him, but now it's overwhelming. As she finds his racing pulse, he wills it to slow and tries to center himself with details: her hair smells of lavender; her robe is shell pink, frayed and pulled tight at the neck. The lapels meet just below her suprasternal notch and he is drawn there, to the steady, gentle movement of her own pulse.

As she lift his lids to examine his sclera, she looks directly into his eyes and he has to struggle not to look away. True or not, he feels that she's demanding something of him.

"You came when I was ill," he says matter-of-factly, but his voice feels thick in his throat. "You read silly children's stories to me."

"You told me you didn't like my Eeyore," she says distantly, moves her fingers to his neck, rotates it gently. He suppresses a shiver.

He casts his mind back, finds the moment through the fog of delirium. "I believe I said it wasn't credible."

She's so close. Once, he had thought her lips were too thin, oddly shaped. Now he finds them fascinating, longs to kiss them, to slide into the warmth of her mouth.

"You did believe my Piglet," she says.

"Most convincing, though hardly a stretch."

She almost smiles at that, then seems to remember. Her eyes stay on his, but their focus slips to someplace inside herself as if she no longer sees him. He feels the change as an almost physical rejection and steels himself, stiffens.

"Why those books, in particular," he says, cold now, an overt accusation in his voice. It occurs to him that she was perhaps attempting to infantilize him, to exercise power over him.

"It's what you asked for."

Absurd.

But true. He remembers his voice making the request and feels heat rising in his cheeks. It must have been that blue room, rendering him helpless, vulnerable. Why a child's room with a tiny bed, why not at least a couch...something with a modicum of dignity? Revenge, of course, to humiliate him.

"Well," she says, finishing her examination and dropping her hands to her lap. "I don't see anything to be concerned about. You need to rest, Sherlock, and finish this course—,"

"Why Isabel's son's room?" He demands harshly.

"I'm sorry?"

"The boy's room. Why did you treat me there?"

"Isabel doesn't have a son, Sherlock, and she doesn't have a room. She's homeless, remember?"

He clenches his jaw. Of course. "Liam's son then, or that enormous Latvian with the paws..."

"Homeless and homeless. Sherlock—," she says, eyeing him. She reaches for his wrist again but he pulls away.

"Where was I then?"

"A hotel on Stroud Green Road. It was the closest. They said you were ranting on about the Balcombe Street Siege or some—"

"No, _before_ then—the blue bedroom, where you read to me." He feels himself growing agitated, his voice rising. That place—the pirate ship, the smell of old books, the too-small bed—were as real as the hard, cold bathtub beneath him now. How can she not remember?

She's shaking her head, her brow furrowed. "You know," she says. "It's not uncommon with bacterial meningitis to...hallucinate—"

"Then where did the books that you read come from," he says, as though scoring the match point. "A child would have those books. I'm not aware of London hotels with copies of The Velveteen Rabbit tucked in the nightstand."

"Sherlock," she says quietly. "I downloaded them with my iPad."

The feeling of disorientation rushes back, makes him reel and grasp the rim of the tub for balance. "Yes," he says. "Of course." _Of course_...how obvious. His mind...so certain...could it have been a hallucination?

She looks up at him with the first real concern he's seen since arriving. It's so familiar, so _welcome,_ that he softens. But he still can't allow her to see him weak... _again_, vulnerable _again_. That's not who he wants to be in her eyes.

"Right," he says, straightening his spine. "And I suppose I didn't hurt you, either."

"What?" Her eyes snap wide.

"Here," he says. He tentatively reaches out to touch the small cut on her lower lip, but she jerks back.

"Oh, yeah, that," she says, a bit flustered, a bit like the old Molly. "That was an accident. A seizure."

"Can you forgive me?" His voice is sonorous in the small room. He sees from her flushed skin and downcast eyes that it affects her, and though he's not trying to manipulate her, he feels some of his former mastery return.

"Sure, no worries," she says. She's still kneeling before him, her hands fisted on her thighs.

And he could manipulate her now; she's quite vulnerable, her manner timid, submissive...comforting. A flurry of scenarios plays through his mind...but he doesn't know exactly what he wants from her.

"I think I hurt you somewhere else, as well," he says, softly, playing for time until he can determine the correct course of action.

He sees her swallow, feels a shift in the room. Her eyes slowly return to his, but she says nothing.

"Stand up, Molly," he says.

His heart is pounding. She doesn't move, just searches his face. He hopes that she'll do as he says, that she has _forgiven_ him and they can go back to normal, that he can put any crippling confusion and insecurity behind him. But it's also a remote possibility that she'll tear the IV from his arm and order him out of her flat. As he braces himself, he becomes aware of her voice streaming in his mind. It's the part about nursery magic and shabby velvet noses and being real when someone truly loves you. He winces inwardly.

Molly pushes to her feet, slowly, to stand at her full height. She seems to loom over him, as he had always tried to loom over her, to intimidate, control. But she is just...there, glaring at him. Molly. Daring him. _Not _loving him, anymore.

Still, he lifts the arm attached to the IV line, lowers it awkwardly, raises the other one, thinks better of the whole thing and drops that arm, too. She waits, watches. He feels foolish, an emotion he thought he'd left far in the past, and it angers him. He reaches out suddenly with his free hand and places his palm flat against Molly's side, just below her right breast. He wants to feel her shiver, to feel her breath quicken. But he sees now that that would be the old Molly.

"Oh, that," she says lightly, not reacting to his touch in the slightest. "You were delirious when we were putting you in the bath. The water was cold and you fought us."

"Of course," he mutters, dropping his hand. "My apologies."

She regards him for a moment. "It's forgotten." Her voice chills him as thoroughly as the memory of the ice bath.

He feels uncharacteristically defeated. The ache is stronger than ever, but he can discern no clear path to easing it. If his mind were focused, functioning properly, perhaps he could solve this problem, put it to rest.

He glances up at the IV bag to see how soon he can leave.

They are quiet for a long time, but she hasn't moved, hasn't stepped away, continues to loom. She is almost stately, studying him. He feels like a slide under a microscope. Finally she says, "There's a bruise."

Her hands are on the sash of her robe. Sherlock looks quickly into her face, but can read no expression there.

"Would you like to see?"

He nods once.

And here is the surprise he'd been looking for...not Mein Kampf on the toilet tank, but her robe slipping from her shoulders to reveal a nightgown of black silk, like water at midnight, sliding over her curves, falling to mid-thigh. He thinks he gasps, probably does because when he looks up again, he sees triumph in her eyes.

She reaches down, takes the hem between her thumb and forefinger. The trembling of her hand, the quickening of her breath, are so slight as to be imperceptible to anyone who hasn't observed her as closely as he has. She lifts the hem slowly to reveal black panties, then the smooth, pale skin of her hips and stomach, stopping just below the gentle swell of her breast. The bruise over her injured ribs is still angry. Impulsively, he raises his fingertips and, without touching her, traces the course of yellow, spreading like a river delta amidst the purple. He can feel her heat.

Surprising himself, he leans in, ghosts his mouth along the same path his fingers had taken, and when he finally allows his lips to graze her, she shudders violently. He looks up into her flushed face and sees something fierce and primal that he has no word for, but it makes him surge, makes him grab the silky black hem and push it up and over her breast, growl as he sucks a taut nipple into his mouth. She sways, gasps and grabs his head as his hands slide up the back of her thighs, pulling her closer. A hard resistance inside him shatters and he's suddenly frantic with _WANT_...this new thing, overwhelming his mind...wanting _her_, wanting to feel and taste, all of her, _now_, and it takes him a moment to realize that she's pulling away from him, from his hands and mouth, shoving him back by his shoulders, and shouting.

"What _else did you do_?"

"What what else?" He's wild, confused, buffeted by a furious energy that seems to emanate from her, his empty hands grasping at air.

"You _eviscerated_ me!" She screams.

Her pain and rage are like a mountain falling on him, and he's stunned, crushed, senseless. That phrase, in that tone, suddenly and completely replaces all the sweet music that had been streaming in his mind.

_You eviscerated me._

It echoes and amplifies until drowned out by the memory of his own voice—mild, amused, precise—and every clever, savage observation, every malignant word he had said to her that miserable night. He had crushed her, made her sick...for having the temerity to see him as he was. And he had _smiled_.

"Yes," he says, his voice thick with regret. "Yes. I did that."

"And you _enjoyed_ it!"

"Yes," he whispers.

She stares at him, shaking, with eyes wide and wet. The black silk is covering her body once more, and she hugs herself tightly. A dozen unvoiced questions play about her lips, but she asks none of them. The answers don't matter.

"I can't forgive you," she says simply.

"I know."

She watches him for a long time as he studies the floor, avoiding her eyes, bereft. He has lost her utterly...even her voice is gone from his mind now and he's alone with his thoughts for the first time in days. He had finally touched her, tasted her, but he had destroyed everything, and now the ache threatens to swallow him whole. Mercifully, she bends over him, removes the tape and IV needle from his arm, and swabs and covers the insertion point with adhesive gauze.

He stands painfully, flexes his arm. He doesn't know why she's still in the same room with him. He finds the courage to meet her eyes. They are filled with unshed tears and she opens and closes her mouth, seeming to struggle with herself. She finally shakes her head and draws a deep breath. When she looks back at him, her tears are flowing freely.

"I hate that I still want you," she says, with such sadness and resignation that he immediately counts this as his hollowest victory.

They stare at each other for a long moment. He waits for her to leave, or rage at him again, anything but her grim silence.

"We could—" he begins, and nods, hoping to signal that he's available to her, if by some miracle that's what she wants.

"Just don't kiss me," she says. She turns and pads down the hall to her bedroom in her little white socks.

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

It's just before dawn and cold blue light bathes Molly's bedroom. Sherlock barely has time to register the predictably floral decor before she grabs him through his slacks with one hand and tears open his shirt with the other.

Sherlock recognizes this as frantic need, had felt it himself only moments before, and it rises in him again in response to her urgency. But the cheek she presses to his chest is wet and she rakes her nails down his back with a strangled cry of rage. He's never been with someone who actively hates him before, never been with anyone, really, and he's immediately out of his depth.

Molly doesn't want to want this, that much is obvious. He knows how she feels. At first he thought her reluctance to kiss him was due to the meningitis, but now he understands: it's too intimate. And the last thing she seems to want from him is intimacy.

She shoves him back against the wall, drops to her knees and, almost before his zipper is down, her mouth is on him, so soft, wet, engulfing, doubling him over with a shock of pleasure. He instinctively reaches for her, but she slaps him away. He doesn't have time to prepare himself for what's coming, and she sucks him so hard and fast that in mere moments he's shuddering, gasping, clutching at the wall behind him for support, shame staining his cheeks. She rises to her feet and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Triumph glistens in her eyes.

"Well," she says, her voice dripping disdain. "That didn't take long."

So, this is to be his punishment: mockery and humiliation, in one of the few areas where he's truly vulnerable. He can put an end to it now, he knows, he can walk out the door and most likely never see her again…

She takes his hand and pulls him into the center of the room. He braces himself for the next onslaught, but surprisingly, she slowly begins undressing him, trailing her fingertips so lightly over each newly-exposed bit of skin that he shivers and sighs in the cold blue light, and despite everything, feels months of tension dissolve beneath her touch. Stepping from his slacks and more, and he's naked before her...amorphous time passing, passing...minutes or hours, as she moves back, circles and appraises him, her face reflecting such intensity and admiration that he feels himself stir again. Then she returns to map the terrain of his body with soft, warm palms—every contour, every plane—as though trying to solve the riddle of his improbable existence.

He longs to hear her speak, but she says nothing.

And then she's behind him, slipping her arms around him, whispering her fingertips over his abdomen, the crest of his hipbones, the dip before the swell of his gluteus muscles, long soft strokes on the front of his thighs. She molds herself along his back, her nipples hard through the black silk. Her hands slide up his lean torso to feather through the spray of hair on his chest and he feels her cheek, warm between his shoulder blades, and then she's holding him fiercely, her palms pressed flat against him, and he feels..._loved_...and it's so good that he drops his head back and moans. And in that instant she releases him, steps away, and the feeling is gone.

"So, you are human after all," she says. "Go lay down."

Flat on his back on her bed now, on sheets still warm from her, and she's stroking his cock slowly, stopping whenever he groans or thrusts into her hand, licking and biting his neck—so sensitive, and he never knew—driving him mad. She won't let him touch her, won't let him see her, now wearing the black silk like armor.

"Don't move," she orders when he reaches for her, "Don't you dare move." But he can't stand it anymore. He rolls her over roughly, gathers and pins her wrists above her head with one hand, cups her hip with the other and slips his thumb under the waistband of her panties. He forgets and lowers his mouth to kiss her. And then she's fighting him like a wildcat, snarling and kicking until he rolls off, cursing with frustration. She doesn't want him dominating her in any way, ever again. He gets it.

"What did I say?" She snarls.

And then she shifts up, moves over him and she's straddling his face, grabbing his hair, pressing black silk against his lips and soft thighs against his cheeks.

"Now what?" She says, mocking him, challenging him.

He is startled, doesn't know quite what to do, but he's angry, so he bites her through the silk and she gasps, rocks. His cock leaps and he does it again, finds a particularly hot, wet place beneath the thin fabric and focuses there, tonguing and sucking as she sways above him, watching, her hair wild, lips wet and parted. She allows him to cup her bottom, tilt her pelvis and he can reach more of her now. He flattens his tongue to make a long sweep, and she throws her head back to release a full-throated moan and he feels like he's won an award. He wraps an arm around her thigh and pulls the panties aside, finally dipping his tongue into the soft wetness of her.

He groans at the intimacy and at the violence of her reaction as she grabs his head with both hands, grinds down against his mouth and whispers, "God, yes, I've wanted this, I've wanted you to do this." This voice is new, and he wants to keep it, wants her to say more, wants desperately for her to say his name in this state. He spreads her gently, sucks and licks, tries to learn her as she rocks her hips, and it seems like only moments until she's keening and convulsing and he feels her shatter against his tongue.

Sherlock is immensely proud as Molly unseats herself, thighs trembling, and slides bonelessly down his body. She's dazed, whimpering, and as raw as he's ever seen anyone. She'd done most of the work, but still—he'd made her come. He feels a surge of power at the thought, and he's in such a frenzy for _more_ that she could do anything to him now and he'd cheer. Almost anything.

She slides her panties down her legs, then off and she's on top of him, trembling, positioning him, then sinking down so slowly that it's torture. Her eyes are closed.

"Oh, you don't know," she whispers from far away. "You don't know." Then she rises up and off. She opens her eyes and watches him while she does it again; sinks down, but barely, then up and off, teasing, never coming remotely close to sheathing him.

What the hell is she playing at? He's fisting the sheets to keep from grabbing her hips and impaling her on his cock. He wants to so badly, but doesn't dare, knows she'll fight him. The seventh time she does it, he's desperate enough to beg.

"Please, Molly, please just...," he gasps.

She looks down at him, her eyes dark and liquid, and there's that challenge again.

"Just what, Sherlock?" She says innocently. "Can't you say the naughty word?"

She lowers her hips, grazing his tip, taunting him, angering him, but he has no choice. "Please," he moans. "Please fuck me."

And with that she shivers, sinks down fully and it's white-hot bliss. He cries out before he can stop himself.

"God, I wish I had that on tape," Molly gasps. "I'd never stop playing it."

He remembers. He tunes in to his mind, listens, but there's silence where her voice should be. He reaches up, slides his hands into her hair.

"Your voice was playing in my head," he whispers. "For days you were there."

He is throbbing inside her, and while she hasn't moved yet, she's vividly hot and tight around him, her hands splayed out on his chest, pressing him down. It's fully dawn now, and her pale skin glows like fire.

"And now you're gone," he says.

Her eyes open, moist, unfocused, and sweep up his body to his face.

"I'm gone," she echoes.

Her hair flows like water between his fingers and he's encased in pulsing silken heat. When she finally moves, slowly, quivering with hushed moans, it's so good he can't imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else. He should shut up now, just rock his hips, run his hands up her thighs, but things want to be said.

"Don't go."

"Sshh, stop talking."

She moves her hands to his face, caressing like a whisper, and his eyes slip closed, listening to her touch.

He doesn't have words of this kind. He has thousands of words at his command, in many languages, but not this kind, that come from somewhere other than the mind.

It's exquisite how slowly she's moving, embracing him inside her, and he opens his eyes and watches her with wonder. He doesn't know her at all, this woman with Molly's face, rocking hypnotically above him, wholly self-possessed, far beyond him in a place he's never been. He allows his fingertips to drift from her hair, to trail gently over her brow, her flushed cheeks, the soft, reddened swell of her lips, the curve of her jaw, and come to rest lightly on the thrumming pulse at the base of her throat. He tries to let his touch be his voice and tell her the things he has no words for, about aching, about regret, about wanting to go back to a time before pain transformed into cruelty.

And he suddenly knows like a slap that, of course, she was right—there was no blue room with the too-short bed. But it wasn't a hallucination. It was a memory, blurred by illness, but a memory nonetheless, of his childhood bedroom before he was sent away to school—where he was safe and whole and happy, and shame had no place. And her voice had led him there. He knows this is psychologically significant, knows it has opened something within him, although he doesn't fully understand it...and he would ponder but for her soft moans, her sweet rocking above him. Later, later...when time has regained its shape...Molly will understand. She will help _him_ understand.

He notes that her pulse has increased beneath his fingertips and she's watching him as he touches her, is listening to his silent voice. Suddenly something changes and she smiles softly, her eyes shining. She arches back, reaches for the hem of her black silk nightgown. He moves his hands to allow her to draw it slowly up her body and off. She glows, so beautiful in the dawn light that she overwhelms his eyes, his mind.

Sherlock understands the eloquence of this gesture, the blessed _forgiveness_ of it, and is flooded with gratitude, relief...and something tender and poignant that he can't name that makes him rise up, slide his arms around her soft body and hold her tightly. But he resists, is unwilling to admit or let her see this new...vulnerability, and he has very nearly mastered himself again when he feels her cradling him, pressing her cheek to the crown of his head. She lifts his face to hers then, and she finally allows him to kiss her...slowly, deeply, and as he is enveloped in the nourishing warmth that he has been missing since that miserable night, he realizes the ache is gone.

With tears stinging his eyes, he gathers her in his arms, shifts his hips, and rolls her gently onto her back. He's not sure how to arrange his body at first, how to hold his weight, how to move, but she shows him by wrapping her legs around his hips, drawing him deep and riding him slowly from beneath until he understands.

He's like a raw nerve, overwhelmed by emotions he's ridiculed in others, refused to acknowledge in himself, but he's allowing them now, safe inside her.

"You love me," she says, watching his face, caressing his lips with wonder.

"Yes," he whispers, nearly lost in the sensations of his body, of Molly beneath him, soft and trembling, clinging to him, loving him. "But first I had to go to the blue room."

"But, Sherlock—"

"Shhh, I know," he murmurs and presses deeply inside her again.

And they rock together, loving, silent voices speaking...saying everything that needs to be said.

_The End_


End file.
